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Big Dig prepares to choose designers

About 150 firms express interest

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff, 4/8/2002

A dozen years after planning began for a renewed Surface Artery corridor
liberally sprinkled with parks, the call for final proposals from urban
designers who want to remold downtown Boston is expected to go out late this
week.

Despite lingering concerns about the process for choosing design teams to
create the three major sections of the corridor from Causeway to Kneeland
streets, Massachusetts Turnpike Authority chairman Matthew Amorello says the
time has come to get something on paper.

"It would be a shame not to be developing the Surface Artery at the same
time the roadway is finishing up [underground]," Amorello said in an interview
late last week.

The detailed specifications that will be issued to scores of interested
design firms late this week, or possibly early next week, include two park
parcels in the North End.

The specifications have been virtually complete since last fall, when they
were originally scheduled to be advertised. But complaints that the selection
process was flawed and political turmoil at the Turnpike Authority caused a
delay that some feared would be indefinite, wiping out the chance that the
surface portion of the project would be ready for public use close to the
planned completion of the underground Central Artery highway early in 2005.

Turnpike and Big Dig officials say that expressions of interest in the
project have been received from about 150 design companies worldwide.

They don't know how many actual bids they will get for each of the three
Surface Artery segments, but hope to choose three finalists for each one. From
those proposals, they hope to uncover specific and creative ideas for the
mile-long corridor in the footprint of the Central Artery.

Specifications for the second area, the Wharf District, are expected to go
out a month or five weeks after the North End request, Amorello said. And the
Turnpike will solicit designers for the third and final piece, near Chinatown,
about a month after that.

Despite years of discussion, hundreds of hours of public meetings, and a
$600,000 master-planning process, no consensus has emerged on how to deal with
Boston's unique opportunity to replace a rusting, disruptive interstate
highway with -- whatever residents want.

One of the obstacles to finding a plan for the open, or public, space among
roughly 30 acres being reclaimed was the inability of city, state, and
Turnpike officials to decide who should own, oversee, and maintain the land.

That barrier was largely eliminated by a recent announcement by Mayor
Thomas Menino and House Speaker Thomas Finneran that they had agreed on a
governing board and a commission dedicated to the space.

As that agreement is being written into proposed legislation, it appears
the Turnpike, which oversees the Central Artery/Ted Williams Tunnel project
and has had primary responsibility for planning the surface portion, may be
taken out of the process.

According to a memo last week to the Mayor's Central Artery Completion Task
Force from its leadership, the commission envisioned by Menino and Finneran
"assumes responsibility for the Central Artery Corridor prior to park design."

The commission had better hurry, because it doesn't yet exist. Legislation
filling in the details of the Menino-Finneran plan for a nonprofit institution
with a small board of trustees and an operational committee must be completed
and then passed on Beacon Hill.

Amorello said he has no problem with the idea of turning over the Surface
Artery planning process to city and state officials. Although he won't wait
for them to act before starting the final design solicitations this week, he
said, "Our interest is operating a safe roadway underneath, and not being a
park agency."

Once a Surface Artery commission is legally in place, Amorello said, it
could take over the designer selection process -- or even start fresh. But, he
said, "I don't want to let time pass while we wait, run the risk of having the
road open up and not have anything on top."

A wide-ranging discussion at last week's Mayor's Task Force meeting
included debate over which responsibilities the commission should have -- even
whether it should be involved in disposing of the half-dozen development
parcels on the surface.

But Amorello drew the line there. "That's a different issue," he said,
sitting in an office that has been held by four people in the last two years,
as Big Dig financial turmoil took its political toll. "The development parcels
are part of the financing system of the Artery," he said, and the plan to
cover multimillion-dollar annual operation costs of the city's new highway
tunnel network.

Asked if he would give up control or revenue from those parcels at the
northern and southern ends of the corridor, he said, "No."

Amorello's push to get final designers on board for the Surface Artery
comes as welcome news to several public interest groups and observers
frustrated by past delays. They worry that procrastination only plays into the
hands of some who may want to change the rules, for example, eliminating the
requirement in the Big Dig's environmental certificate that 75 percent of the
new territory be accessible to the public.

"If we continue to delay the design and completion of the parks on the
Central Artery surface corridor so they can be completed by the project, we
risk losing them," said Anne Fanton, executive director of the Artery
Oversight Committee.

Amorello had another piece of news that will please critics of the designer
selection process. Some, the Boston Society of Architects in particular, have
expressed concern that the actual design concepts submitted by the finalists
for the parcels will be seen only by a five-person selection committee, not by
the public.

But Amorello said he is leaning toward an open process, entertaining a
public discussion on the final proposals before the three designers, or design
teams, are chosen.

Although he did not commit himself, he said, "I would look at that. My
inclination is they would be made public for everybody to look at."

Given the current timing outlined by Amorello, that could happen on the
North End portion as early as September. Design teams will have two months
from this week to submit their proposals, he said, and the selection of
finalists will also take about 30 days.

The finalists will then be asked to present their ideas, for which they
will be paid. The Turnpike will select one final designer but will own the
creative work of all of those who competed.

"I'm pleased there is such worldwide interest," said Amorello. "We're
sitting in the driver's seat in terms of getting talent."